Tony Rogerson's ramblings on SQL Server

Common Table Expressions (CTE's) - How it works; How Recursion Works; Using with Adjacency List

tonyrogerson — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:47:00 GMT

Recursion in Common Table Expressions (CTE’s), how does it work? How can I use it with the adjacency list model (parent / child columns)? In this blog entry I show how recursion works, how to use it with the adjacency list model and talk about other aspects...(read more)

Using the OUTPUT clause on INSERT when loading data using OPENROWSET and BULK operator

tonyrogerson — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:52:00 GMT

Say you have an external file you want to load into your SQL Server database; you need to load – verify – cleanse and insert and at the same time keep a cross reference between the original source file records and the inserted database rows. The OUTPUT...(read more)

UK MS Premier Customer? - Premier Field Engineering are hosting an Operations Day for SQL 2008

tonyrogerson — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:06:00 GMT

5th June, Thames Valley Park, Reading sees an Operations Day for SQL Server 2008 for Premier customers only. More information: http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/thepremiers/archive/2008/04/27/operations-day-for-sql-server-2008-open-for-premier-customers-only...(read more)

MVP Summit 2008 - Seattle; Euan Garden BBQ - 5 SQL Server MVP's as "the band"

tonyrogerson — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:33:00 GMT

This week I'm over in Seattle for the MVP Summit, a number of us UK SQL Server MVP's are out here - myself, Simon Sabin, David Portas, Jamie Thomson, Rob Farley and Satya Jantry.

We popped over to see Euan yesterday for a BBQ - I knew things started to go down hill when we started to play on his xbox and the Rock Band game.

Want to see? http://sqlblogcasts.com/r.ashx?F

Shaping up for a good week - met up with some folks I've not seen in a long while - Russell Fields, Roy Harvey - great to see you guys back in the program.

MSTSC - No more /Console

tonyrogerson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:30:00 GMT

If like me you spend the majority of your life remote desktoping to various servers you should know that as of Vista SP1 the /console switch no longer gets you to the Console session on the server - you need to use the /admin switch instead; apparently...(read more)

London Event 13-16 May: Insight from Kimball University: Microsoft Data Warehouse in Depth

tonyrogerson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:01:00 GMT

Microsoft Data Warehouse in Depth Joy Mundy & Warren Thornthwaite London, 13 – 16 May 2008 Attend Microsoft Data Warehouse in Depth at Crown Plaza London, May 13-16 to discover how to build a successful business intelligence system using Microsoft...(read more)

Rude easter egg in SQL 2005 - Uniqueidentifier gives the F0FF

tonyrogerson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:41:00 GMT

I found this while researching a blog article; very interesting - I always thought code was put in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Only seems to work on SQL Server 2005 SP1. set language british set ansi_defaults off set ansi_nulls...(read more)

Send Table or View as embedded HTML in an email – stored procedure
tonyrogerson — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:19:00 GMT
Ever wanted to take a table, permanent or temporary or a view and just email it straight from SQL where the query result sits in the email as a nicely formatted HTML table rather than that ugly text file attachment you get when using sp_send_dbmail? Ever...(read more)

Taking stock on the success of SQLBlogCasts.com

tonyrogerson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:03:00 GMT
Spent a while today upgrading SQLBlogCasts.com from CS2.0 to CS2007.1 - very simple migration, a few things I'd forgotten to do but up and running now. It's resident on one of my own servers down in Docklands running on SQL 2005 Express. While...(read more)

Database taste challenge - SQL Server 2005 v Oracle 11g.

tonyrogerson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:32:00 GMT
"What tastes better, Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 or Oracle 11g? What do people think? We're taking the taste challenge to the street. Find out what people are saying about their favorite database. Tast-ay!" Very good, very funny. http://www.databasetastechallenge...(read more)

Rampant Frogs Run Riot in Tony's pond Froggy Style

tonyrogerson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:08:00 GMT
Spring is upon us here in Harpenden, UK. Just took a couple of shots from my pond whilst having a break. Enjoy.... (I'll give a book to the best captions (postage to UK Mainland only)) If you want a bigger side image then -> http://sqlblogcasts.com...(read more)

sp_send_dbmail in a transaction with @query causes unresolvable deadlock

tonyrogerson — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:01:00 GMT
So you are using the @query parameter of sp_send_dbmail and all of a sudden you start getting blocks and your connection running sp_send_mail is the cause, your connection running sp_send_mail just sits there in a runnable state with the lastwaittype...(read more)

SQLBits - My Session - Making the Leap into Advanced T-SQL

tonyrogerson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:13:00 GMT
Got round to sorting the bits out, the session I did at SQLBits Birmingham on 1st March I looked at some of the table expressions available in SQL Server 2005 - Derived Tables, Temporary Tables and Common Table Expressions. I look at the basic framework...(read more)

SQLBits II - Some thoughts from last Sat

tonyrogerson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:06:00 GMT
As I draw breath from another busy week I take stock on what a great event last Saturday was - 350 people on the day, tons of positive feedback, throughout the day the whole atmosphere was great - can't wait until SQLBits III. The day did start off in...(read more)

Rafal Lukawiecki - Data Mining and Business Intelligence - London, 3rd April - all day event

tonyrogerson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:05:00 GMT
I was talking with David Hobbs-Mallyon (SQL Server Product Manager here in the UK - a good guy to know for swag and believe me Simon Sabin and I whipped a load away from yesterday's launch event for give aways at SQLBits (thanks Ellie too!), anyway I...(read more)